


You Make It Real

by gayalondiel



Series: watsons_woes July 2011 challenge [20]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Gen, Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayalondiel/pseuds/gayalondiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is wrong; John won’t tell Sherlock what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Make It Real

**Author's Note:**

> watsons_woes LJ community posted a daily prompt challenge for July 2011 wherein you had to respond within 24 hours. These are my responses, so they are a little hasty and unpolished. Also damned weird.
> 
> July 20: Watson's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Discussion of cancer.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** The Holmes characters fall in the public domain: This version falls under the creative control of Messers Moffatt and Gatiss, and the BBC. No ownership is implied or inferred. This is done for love only.
> 
>  **AN:** The angst is back! Hurrah! Also, I am tipsy. Also+, I am late... I’m claiming 90 minutes’ grace for watching Sherlock. It’s 1am in the UK, it’s still the 20th somewhere, right?

John’s phone buzzed about 3am, jerking him out of his listless doze in the armchair. Sherlock gave him a pointed look and resumed his thinking pose, lips pursed, fingers steepled. John grabbed the phone up and answered it blearily.

 _Harry_ , Sherlock’s mind informed him, and it was confirmed by John repeating the name out loud. It was too easy to count as a proper deduction and he tried to tune it out, but he couldn’t quite stop hearing him.

“Harry! Harry, calm down. How much have you... no, no, never mind that. What’s going on? No, he’s... sure. I’m going now.” Casting half a glance at Sherlock, John rose and hurried up the stairs to his room, talking all the while. Sherlock just heard “I’m here, now what’s-” before the door slammed shut. He closed his eyes and revelled in the peace for a split second before resuming his train of thought.

Two hours later he realised that John had never come back. He assumed he must have fallen asleep.

***

Sherlock glanced up from his workstation as Mike wandered in. There was something tired and worn about him today, which Sherlock noticed but filed away as unimportant. Mike gave him a smile, nonetheless, and settled on the opposite side of the bench.

“How’s John doing today?” he asked.

“Fine, I assume,” replied Sherlock, distracted by his soil samples. He could feel Mike frowning at him without having to look, but by the time he looked back was met by averted eyes and a pointed silence. In truth, he had barely spoken to John for the last day or so. He had gone out early the morning after Harry called, two nights previously, and had spent most of that day doing extra shifts at work, presumably to keep his mind off his self-destructive sister and her bad habits. This morning when Sherlock emerged from his room he was gone again, the timetable on the fridge confirming that he had the early clinic.

Their paths had failed to cross, but Sherlock had not considered that to be ill-omened at all. Nonetheless, something about the way Mike spoke made him pause. Mike’s tone was not a casual enquiry born of politeness; there was more than a shade of concern and understanding in it.

“Mike,” he began, but Mike held up a hand.

“Sorry, Sherlock,” he said, in just the way a man might when he realised that he knew something someone else didn’t, and didn’t want to say so. “I’ve just, I’ve got to. I have someone I need to see.” He hurried to the door, paused and looked back. “You should probably talk to John, though.” He left, and Sherlock stared after him, bemused and a little hurt, although he would not have admitted it.

***

The crime scene was exquisite. Three bodies, not a mark on them, a locked room, no sign of anything untoward about them, except that they were dead and artfully arranged on the rug. Lestrade had called him mid-afternoon, desperate although determined not to show it, and Sherlock in turn had summoned John, knowing that his flatmate had taken the morning clinic and so was certainly free. John had beaten him to the scene and was muttering in a low voice with Lestrade when he got there.

Sherlock strode past them to the bodies, sweeping around them to establish the scenario. As he worked Anderson approached, and just as he was indicating the number and profession of the women with whom Anderson had spent the last few nights, and ignoring the deep and outraged blushes of Donovan on the other side of the room, a hand wrapped around his forearm and tugged him back.

“Will you give it a rest?” snapped John, pale with rage. Sherlock froze, startled, and stared at him. Before he could speak, John was in a full-blown rant, staring directly at him, yelling about Anderson and Donovan and hurt feelings, how dare he, didn’t he realise how people felt... and suddenly whirled and stormed off, leaving Sherlock stunned in his wake. Silence descended, and then Anderson gave a loud scoffing noise, strangled when Lestrade gave him a pointed look.

“Sherlock, look,” he said. “We’re not looking at a serial killer here, this is a crime of passion. You need to look after John right now, this can wait for a couple of hours.”

Sherlock frowned, and saw it when Lestrade realised he was missing something. He went to speak but Lestrade, like Mike, stopped him with a gesture.

“If you don’t... You should talk to John, Sherlock. He’ll be okay, he just needs,,, yeah. Talk to him.”

***

He went home in a daze, aware through his irritation that there was a vital piece of information that he was missing. At Baker Street he stormed inside to find John in his chair, resigned to the inevitable outburst but somehow defiant.

“What,” he ground out, “was that?”

John glared up at him. “High time someone said it, Sherlock.”

“People say it all the time!” snapped Sherlock. “You don’t, though. Everyone else, I expect it from them, except possibly Lestrade. What did I do that made you this angry?”

“You?”

“Yes, me. Both Stamford and Lestrade have told me to talk to you, so there must be something I’ve done that’s upset you. If you’d just-”

“It’s nothing to do with you!” yelled John, his composure cracking as he leapt to his feet. “Not everything revolves around you! Some things are nothing to do with you, or me, and some things can’t be changed, however hard you try...” He trailed off, turning his back and balling his fists. Suddenly off-kilter, Sherlock sat down, making himself as non-threatening as possible. He perched on the edge of the sofa, waiting in silence, until John relaxed. His head bowed, his shoulders slumped, and still Sherlock did not speak, until he had returned to his seat and dropped down in exhaustion and defeat,

Finally he felt ready. “What is it?” he asked, in tones unfamiliar even to himself, almost gentle. He waited, looking intently at John until he raised his eyes and Sherlock saw that there were tears being tightly held back at the corner of his eyes. He could only thing of one thing that elicited that response from John. “Harry,” he murmured. “What did she tell you, what is it?”

“Osteosarcoma,” said John dully.

Sherlock felt his brain kick into gear. “Cancer,” he replied. “Your response... it’s terminal? Metastases?”

John nodded. “Distant mets in half a dozen places,” he replied. Before Sherlock could respond with the requisite platitudes, he continued to talk. “Don’t tell me it’s going to be all right, please. There’s nothing we can do. You can’t deduce it, Lestrade can’t arrest it, Mycroft can’t make it disappear, and I... I...”

“You can’t fix it.”

“No.”

“And Stamford can’t find any colleagues, at Barts or elsewhere, undertaking a study that might offer you hope,” said Sherlock almost to himself, the last piece slotting into place. John shook his head.

“There isn’t anything,” he replied. “We’ve looked everywhere, everyone we know, everyone they know.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

“You told Stamford.”

“I needed him.”

“You told Lestrade.”

“He saw me when I got to the scene. He... I was... It was a tricky moment, he saw. I didn’t choose to tell him, I think his mother... he knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

This time, John looked up to meet his eyes, and the bald grief in them hit Sherlock like a punch to the stomach. “I didn’t tell you because... you’re real, you’re part of my life. Telling you... makes it real.”

Sherlock slumped back as though his strings had been cut. “Thank you,” he whispered, nonsensically, and then: “What can I do?”

John shook his head. “Nothing. Just... be normal, okay? That’s what I need right now.”

“Normal?”

“Normal. Yes. Heads in the fridge, skulls on the mantelpiece, everything. Just be you, let me be me.”

“Of course.” Sherlock watched as he crossed the room, the conversation clearly over. John expected him to be his normal self when he dragged himself from bed in the morning, determining once more to face the world. He wanted to say something, knew it went against John’s wishes, knew he couldn’t say it. Hoped John could hear it, regardless of the silence between them.

 _I will always be here for you. Whatever you need_.


End file.
